Writing conditions etc...

Now I know some writers thrive on stress and emotional turmoil and all sorts of things like that, but I have to say that, categorically, I do not. I don't require everything to be perfect to write, but there are some conditions under which I write incredibly badly.

The reason I started thinking about this is that at the moment I have a cold. It's getting better, but I have been left with a raging cough that is keeping me awake a night. That leaves me tired and lethargic during the day, which is making writing very hard. I'm making myself do it, but every word is a struggle. It is as if my brain just doesn't want to work properly and is refusing to come up with the right words in the right order.

I'm hoping this cough will bugger off soon, so that I can get back to my normal schedule.

I also have trouble writing when my darling husband is away on business. The odd night away I can cope with, but every now and then he goes off to China for a week and I find that really hard. I think it may be sleeping again, because whilst he's away I don't sleep well at all.

When he has one of these trips I always start off thinking I will be majorly productive with no distractions. I can sit and write and have something to concentrate on while he is away, so it should be perfect. It never is. By about day four I am incapable of writing anything decent at all. However, somewhat surprisingly, I can still do cover art, which makes no sense at all; possibly it's just my verbal brain which starts shutting down?

Usually I don't have to be in any particular mood to write a particular genre; I can write the blackest horror when I'm in a fabulous mood, or the lightest humour when all I want to do is throw things. There is only one exception to this; sexually explicit scenes. I have to be in the right mood to write those and not because the words won't come, but because the right words won't happen if I'm not in the right head space.

I think the worse thing there can possibly be about a sex scene, even above being badly written, is being boring. Slot A, tab B kind of stuff. At least if a badly written sex scene has emotion in it, it can add to the overall picture of the story, even if it is painful to read, a boring one does nothing but turn the reader to watching paint dry for entertainment.

So, now you know some of my writing hangups, what are yours? Do you have to be happy to write romance, or sad to write horror, or anything like that?

And readers, do you have to be in a particular mood to read a particular genre, or do you just devour any and all fiction when you find it?